Western Plan Unheard Amid Shelling Five Children Killed In Bihac; Two People, Including A 10-Year-Old Girl, Killed In Sarajevo

Weary of empty promises of protection, Bosnian Muslims faced another day of dodging bullets and shrapnel after allies vowed to protect them from Serb shells.

With no electricity and few means of communication, most Sarajevans probably were unaware Friday that Western allies warned Bosnian Serbs that any attack on the enclave of Gorazde, southeast of Sarajevo, will be met with a “substantial and decisive” airstrike.

“Once more the international community has backed down,” Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic said.

The rebel Serbs’ commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, boasted his intention to take all the U.N. “safe areas” in Bosnia and finish the war within a few months.

“By autumn, we’ll take Gorazde, Bihac and in the end Sarajevo and we’ll finish the war in Bosnia,” Mladic said in an interview with the Belgrade weekly Svet (The World), published Friday.

The Western nations warned rebel Serbs against attacking Gorazde, but there was no specific mention of four other U.N.-declared “safe areas”: Sarajevo, Bihac, Tuzla and Zepa.

Leading Islamic countries meeting in Geneva offered a glimmer of hope by agreeing to tougher action to help Bosnian Muslims.

Some members of the Islamic organizations offered their biggest commitments yet to provide arms, said Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey.

As the long-awaited Western announcement was made, fighting flared in four of five “safe areas” in Bosnia.

Five children were killed and 30 people wounded Friday in the northwestern Bihac pocket, Bosnian radio reported.

The International Red Cross said it was working feverishly to feed and care for up to 1,000 fleeing people. Aid workers were delivering medical supplies to hospitals swamped with wounded in four villages, a Red Cross statement said.

Two people, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed and at least 19 wounded in Sarajevo when shells hit the city center Friday. Streets were deserted most of the day, and fighting relented only as darkness fell.

Rebel Serbs reportedly shelled Gorazde, too, triggering a general alert, Bosnian government radio reported.

Aid officials said civilians there were imperiled by another deadly stalker: hunger.

“Regardless of any imminent military threat to Gorazde, it is being slowly starved and strangled,” said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. He said only one convoy with food for the town’s 50,000-60,000 people had arrived since May 20.

Serbs blocked attempts to evacuate the wounded from Zepa Friday, and intensified their onslaught on the “safe area” with a brief mortar barrage after Muslim defenders refused to surrender, U.N. officials said.

Serbs claimed two days ago that Zepa had fallen. But Muslim forces have refused to surrender and a standoff has ensued, leaving the fate of 10,000-16,000 civilians in doubt. A U.N. team on Friday abandoned efforts to negotiate the evacuation of the wounded, women, children and the elderly.